Dominion

Overview

In Dominion, your parents died and left you with 3 Estates and 7 Copper coins for all the good that’ll do you. But you’re pretty resourceful and somehow, you’re able to use those coins to buy a Smithy and some Silver. And then you find a way to bring a Laboratory into the fold. Then you go to a chapel to purge your sins which results in you losing the 3 Estates and a handful of Copper, but you’re the better for it! Somehow. I’m actually not sure how this works but you eventually pool enough money to buy a Province. I call financial shenanigans…

Dominion is a 2-4 player game where you start out with an initial hand of cards and use this pool of resources to go buy more cards, adding them to your deck as you do so. Some of these cards are currency cards which will help you in buying more expensive cards while other cards allow you to draw cards and expand your capabilities or even give you special capabilities like being able to purge your deck of crappy cards or attacking your opponent.

With that in mind, you will need to keep an eye on what your rivals are doing because of how limited resources are. If you see them starting to buy super valuable point cards like Provinces or even the occasional Duchy, it behooves you to snap up valuable property to match them point for point. And of course, beware when your opponents start snatching up Attack cards as they’ll have no qualms in using them against you. Be especially wary if your opponent buys the Witch lest you be cursed. Better to burn the witch first.

Core Mechanics: Deckbuilding

Victory Condition: Dominion is all about scoring the most points. During the course of the game, players will be adding point cards to their decks in the way they add cards in general: by buying them. Point cards will be your key to victory with Provinces giving you 6 points, Duchies giving you 3 points, and Estates giving you a measly 1 point at the very end of the game.

Ease of learning: Really easy to learn. The game consists of a few terms like Action, Buy, Draw, and some other card text that’s easy to explain and easy to parse. None of it will take more than 5 minutes to explain and people should be able to pick up on it rather quickly. Understanding the flow of the game is also a snap; it’s not that hard for you to explain that during the game, people will draw a hand of cards, play as many actions as they’re allowed to, then put down the gold, then buy as many cards as they’re allowed to and then repeat the process all over again. And if it’s too hard to explain, most people will pick up on a quick demonstration pretty quickly.